->''"History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new."''-->--''[[Literature/TheBible Ecclesiastes 1:9]]''

Any tropes that predate the election of UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy to the U.S. Presidency (November 1960), divided by period:

[[index]]* OlderThanDirt - Predating the Greek alphabet (circa 800 BCE).* OlderThanFeudalism - First seen between the invention of the Greek alphabet (c. 800 BCE) and the fall of the Roman Empire (CE 476).* OlderThanPrint - First seen between the end of the Western Roman Empire (476) and the invention of the printing press (1439).* OlderThanSteam - First seen between the invention of printing press (1439) and the steam engine (1698).* OlderThanRadio - First seen between the invention of the steam engine (1698) and the radio (1890).* OlderThanTelevision - First seen between the invention of the radio (1890) and the start of mass television (1939).[[/index]]* Classic TV - Tropes originating in TV itself, between 1940 and 1960, such as SpaceX[[index]]* OlderThanTheNES - Predating the introduction of the NintendoEntertainmentSystem in the U.S. (1985). A special cutoff date for video game tropes, since they're even more recent than television.

[[/index]]

Contrast with TheNewestOnesInTheBook.

Anal historical note: Several of the listed milestones in tropes existed well prior to the appended dates but either had minimal impact or were lost in later years. For example, movable type blocks existed in Greece around 300 BCE but did not have the same impact on history as the Gutenberg Press. OlderThanPrint is simply short-hand for the more accurate trope name as [[OverlyLongName Older Than The Widespread Adoption Of Movable Type To The Point That It Had A Widespread And Irreversible Severance From The World As It Was Before]] is rather difficult to type.